Dish lost 102,000 subscribers during Q4 -- versus the 10,000 subscriber additions Wall Street was looking for -- finishing the year with 13.7 million subs. It lost about 102,000 in full-year 2008, too.

What's Dish's problem? The housing recession -- only a tiny trickle of new houses being built -- isn't helping. But we think many subscribers have left for competing services from cable companies, which offer high-speed Internet and digital phone service in bundles.

And while Dish has traditionally partnered with phone companies to offer TV to their subscribers, phone companies like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are increasingly offering their own TV service via fiber optic networks they're building out. AT&T also dumped its reseller offer with Dish last summer in favor of DirecTV (DTV).